Greetings(HoN/DoTA/TF2 Fan)

When I found out this game was ported to PC I was very excited. I have an xbox just not a fan of xbox with games like these for the lack of updates/DLC. But over all I'm liking this game even more each time that I play it.

As a huge fan of the DoTA style and game play, I have a very comfortable feeling playing this genre. But I feel as if there isn't enough competitive support to this game. I don't know the map names particularly yet. But I feel like the levels that don't have direct lanes but are zig zaging are just very teach death matchish. I feel like the levels similiar to DoTA in the essence of the direct 2-3 lanes are the stronger maps for a harder style game play. Where it's not just running around killing people but an actual map where you can perform ganks betweens lanes on the players that are pushing(if people are pushing which I never see anyone do really)

The only problem I have is using gold for buying turrets/creeps along with buying skills with the same gold. I feel that the missing factor of levels and XP are ruining the balance between the people just farming up and the people who gank and fail but really have no severe consequence.

I really feel this game has potential if you can gear it a little harder instead of casual death match shooter with a variety of creeps pushing lanes.


tl;dr

Dota map port
less casual

I love it for that reason. While you are at a disadvantage not skilled up its no where near the imbalance you face with skill differences in the Dota games.

I don't have the benefit of playing with a consistent team, but when I do the coordination can end games in a few minutes. There's a lot of skill still involved in this game.

I agree with Polly No Meal.

Sounds like someone else who needs to be playing on my hour-match server. Heh.

As a rather intense LOL player - and all rivalry between the games aside, they do have some similar principals that you're discussing here - you DO see those kinds of conditions, but typically only in relatively matched games with very similar skill opponents.

"Pushing" tends to happen very rapidly, because bots are super fragile. It's more a question of establishing position of influence in this game, and then forcing your position forward. Ganking is a bit less of a major issue, because death timers are extremely short and kills are very easy to make occur.

I agree the game has massive competitive potential, but so far that potential appears to be heavily underutilized or ignored outright. I'm not sure on what level that decision has been made for Uber, but I hope it's one they'll reconsider in time.

To be fair, the last patch removed almost half the bots spawn, taking away allot of the laning strategy at this time, tho the devs said in another post that they intend to increase the bots again. I believe they have them out for net code testing or some such programming fun.

As a LoL player myself, i find applying laning strategies to be very effective, but, in my opinion i feel the turrets and bots/creeps are too weak as well as too few (in this build) allowing for a more experienced/aggressive team to simply rush base and pin down the opposing team in there base and effectively spawn camp until the ball drops. This scenario is becoming more commonplace each day and is dangerous to new players forming an opinion of the game... We do want more ppl to play right?

I'm a LoLLer too. This kind of strategy/gameplay is exactly what I love, and putting it in a setting with guns and robots is heaven for me. I'm so glad it came to the PC.

This ^

This is the truth.
Bots and turrets are too weak.
What they should do, is make turrets SUPERLETHAL for players, making them hard to approach and at least not welcome to approach EVEN WHILE JUICED. Any level 3 turret goes down if someone has juice, and if it is a rocketturret they won't even feel it's shots especially if it is a tank or gunner.

So this is how I think this could work:
Turrets pwns Players.
Players pwns Bots/Players.
Bots pwns Turrets.

Would discourage the spawncamping and encourage more teamplay to push the frontlines further for their bots and make people spawn bots tactically to their advantage.

I like the turret-player-bot balance the way it is right now. We don't need this being more like Dota.

But it would be nice if the bots were tougher, so you didn't have players going wherever the hell they like, since the lanes don't exactly feel like major parts of the map.

There is no turret-player-bot balance.

There's a very lopsided turret-player balance, and a "oh right, there are bots out here" balance.

The only bot that PROFOUNDLY matters is the Jackbot, and that's a rare arrival. Bouncers - if you're paying attention - are a non-issue (dodge the lunge, grapple and kill), gapshots can be countered because of their very zerg-style movement, and all the others are a joke unless you're doing something dumb. (No offense to anyone ever killed by a Gremlin or a Buzzer, but c'mon, you could've avoided that easily.)

I think that's the point that people are trying to make. Bots are largely an afterthought in the game at the moment, usable only for very brief times at most. You bring down the moneyball not when you push in the enemy bots, but when you shut down the enemy team hard enough that your bots happen to saunter in. There's a major difference there, and that's what people are pointing to.

^This
Im not saying make the bots/turrets unbeatable, but they should require some team effort to break, as it stands now, they hold little to no threat to anyone with an ounce of skill. As a primary Sin player (who usually has no armor perks equipped), i can easily dispatch several waves in heading in, be juiced, deturret the majority of there base and head back home cleaning up any bots that escaped the onslaught. As it stands it seems more and more games ppl dont bother with the turrets unless they have already maxed there own skills since they figure even if they manage to max the turret it will be destroyed before they make a return on it.

I also believe that most of the class spawn bots are fairly useless as well, there are moments they come in handy, but for the price there is generally better places to spend your cash. I think a neat possibility for the player spawned bots is to have them be controllable and only allow one spawn at a time, maby have a hotkey that cycles them from attack, follow, and stay mode sort of thing give them alot more tactical value. Think of placing a group of gremlins on guard around your Shaveice, or how valuable Gapshots would become being placed strategically instead of them just charging is as they do now.

To be fair, we have to see this game from the console prospective. The game was originally developed to make use of a specific controller type (gamepad) which is innately more cumbersome to use in a FPS/3PS setting. On PC players have the advantage of precision movements with mouse control allowing for greater spatial awareness as well as superior accuracy. That we must keep in mind, and im sure the devs are well aware of this.

Something to think about anyways. Cheers

I wish people would farm more before going out to fight! Seems every game I try to farm and upgrade a couple skills before I fight some pros, but the rest of my team goes out and tries to fight right off the bat and ends up dying.

I know, more gold for me in the lane, but I wish there was a mini-map like in LoL where you could see where help was needed and even ping to tell your teammates!

Like most of the ppl in this thread I am a huge LoL player (over 900 games) and have played over 2500 hours of TF2, 600+ on comp Medic alone. I feel I have a lot to offer to my team as far as teamwork goes, but it sucks having to type everything out all the time :\

Add me if you want!

Scathis purposely made bots the way they are. Do you know how few bots it takes to drop the moneyball's shields? Next people are going to suggest last hitting.

Oh yeah, I always wait for last hits on bots.
*facepalm*

In all seriousness, things are good the way they are. One thing you have to realize is that if the turrets were made too powerful, it would take a huge coordinated push to get into the base. Even if there were no resistance by the turret's allies, that could be difficult. The point of making the turrets and bots weaker is that it makes the play field more malleable.

What I mean by malleable: Simply put, it's easy to push lanes. As long as you aren't interrupted, you'll have absolutely no problem clearing out waves of bots. The end result is a quickly changing game of push and counter push.

Turn that around and give the bots more health and more power. It's now harder to push lanes. The bots push back and forth and players have less influence over where the "frontlines" are. Now it takes five minutes to push a wave of your minions into your opponents' base. Since the respawn timers are so low, a pro will have no problem stopping you by the time you fend of their last bot wave. He pushes yours back, and his pile on and push all the way back to your base. Ten minutes later he's doing the same thing to you.

See the problem here? A game of crossfire is... what 15 minutes long? Giving the bots/turrets more health and power slows the macro game to a crawl. As someone who plays League of Legends, I would be scared if Monday Night Combat was that slow. The whole point of the game is to provide ultra-fast action and quick matches. Changing the metagame so intensely would be counterproductive.

TLDR: Bring back a bot or two per wave (less than pre update 3, and more than post) but otherwise focus on pro vs pro encounters and make fighting bots a quick and simple task.

Agreed.

Not to be contrary, but like most other aspects of the game, the devs would be able to adjust the bot shield damage factor as well. I think it is 3 bots to remove the shield judging by the behavior of it's graphical effect on the money ball.

And speaking of the money ball, something needs to be done about the player damage to it, it is too easy to pop juice, shred it, smack it for a few more seconds, pop juice again and repeat. Most games i can do this several times before i die or win.
Possible fix;
1)lessoning Player damage to it
2)only allow bots to damage it
3)gain less or no juice from hitting the money ball (best IMO as i feel this is an exploit that is easily remedied)

Also, bot/turret durability could be a programmable server option allowing games to be set up for a variety of players. Want long epic 1hr battles? Set the bots to tough mode. want short quick 10 - 15 min skirmishes? Set the bots to easy mode. Simple fix, and even if it may be hard to program it onto the interface (for custom games by players in game), im sure that they can make a script easily that dedicates servers can use.

I think we are hijacking this into a suggestions thread.

Gentlemen, this isn't DotA.

I know you'd love it to be DotA, just for that comforting feeling of familiarity. I can feel for that.
But copy+pasting the gameplay down to the t sometimes doesn't work quite as well.

I feel that you're underplaying the importance of bots and power of turrets in your perception of the game.
The only thing fundamentally different in MNC is that you're the one escorting the bots, not the other way round like in the MOBA games.
You just skip the long, stressful attrition play and get right to the juicy action.
Think of it as if you start off at level ~12 right off the bat. It's exactly the same metagame overall.

I also agree with this, as well as what the rest of you are saying on this page. LAst hits on bots made me lol :lol:

I'm not speaking for others, but I'm not looking for a return to DOTA or LOL. I still play LOL and I like that where it is. This isn't and shouldn't try to be LOL. I'm more interested in - as I've stated in other threads - increasing the reality of the teamwork requirements of the game.

I'm asking for:

- All types of spawnbots to matter, if not Slims/Blacks. Right now, Bouncers slightly matter, Gapshots barely matter, and the others are jokes.
- All types of turrets to be more significant to play, which they are not now. The only turret that is a genuine threat to an offensive that requires more than a tactical sneeze is a 3.3 Rocket.

As it stands now, a single pro with the proper tactics - ANY pro, though certainly some quicker than others - can demolish any turret relatively speedily, if unmolested for maybe 10-12 seconds. Possibly, only barely, would a Sniper exceed that, and his anti-pro tactical capabilities are staggering, which more than makes up for it.

I'd like to see it take just a bit more than 1/6th of a team's effort for 10 seconds (and let's face it, there are at least two classes that, with juice, can do it in under 5) to destroy the most fundamental fixed defenses of the moneyball. Maybe I'm crazy.

But people said my hour-long game server that's packed nearly 24/7 was a bad idea, too.

before we ask for bots to be buffed, let's wait until there's some form of competitive play out there, and see what strategies 6-man teams can employ. I can imagine manually spawned bots being very effective in a competitive match if accompanied by a cohesive team; assuming all the human players in the game are pretty damn good, if you're forced to shoot at a bot instead of a human during a firefight, that human is going to kill you.